8/26/26 - 2161: Emotional Endurance: Persevering with purpose

Jim: This is iWork4Him.

Martha: Where faith meets work, and believers unleash their calling.

Jim: Romans 12:2 says that we should be renewing our minds, changing the way we think. But how do we do this? Leslie Bosserman was asking the same question as she battled the darkness of depression and discouragement, wrapped up in her blanket like a couch burrito.

Jim: Leslie needed help, and the Lord said to her friend, sent her a friend who prayed with her daily and led her out of the darkness, and eventually down the wedding aisle. Leslie learned something powerful during those dark days. She learned you need to work on building your emotional endurance. It doesn't come easy, and it doesn't come quick.

Jim: It's a process, and the process is strenuous, kinda like training for a marathon versus running the bases playing softball. Leslie Bosserman says that by persevering on purpose for an eternal purpose, we leave a lasting legacy with our emotional endurance. That's a lot, I understand. For all of us within earshot, we need to build this emotional endurance so that we are as effective as we can be in living out our faith at work.

Jim: Leslie Bosserman wrote her book, Emotional Endurance, as a guide on how to get our minds well in order for our souls to thrive and for our communities to flourish. She's here to tell us more. Leslie Bosserman, welcome to iWork4Him.

Leslie Bosserman: Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's a joy to be here.

Jim: Leslie, tell us your Jesus story.

Leslie Bosserman: Ah, so I grew up as a Christian believer. My parents actually came into faith late in life, I would say, two years before I was born. And so there is some kind of learning alongside of them, which was really powerful and hard at times as a child, we'll say. So I joke that I'm constantly being called to move to Nineveh.

Leslie Bosserman: So I grew up right outside of Silicon Valley, and then went to college at UCLA, and a lot of the people in my church community were questioning, "Okay, that's a pretty big, liberal, giant institution. Are you sure you're ready to move away from home and walk in faith?" And I was like, "Yes, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna be a broadcast journalist. This is where I'm going."

Leslie Bosserman: I had so much faith and so much hope, but what really fortified my faith that freshman year was not just going through the motions of going to church, 'cause my family goes to church, and really taking true ownership of who I am as a believer, who I am as a child of God. And we grew up observing a weekly Sabbath from birth till now, and actually choosing to do that on my own in a busy institution where there's always something going on. So actually choosing rest, and choosing God, and choosing Jesus, that was a huge part of kind of that formative young adult development.

Jim: Did you have a specific campus ministry that you wanna give a shout-out to that made an, had an influence in your life?

Leslie Bosserman: It's so interesting. When I say being called to Nineveh, I actually worked in residential life, which no one would call a campus ministry, maybe a covert ministry but I was associated with CRU and Young Life, and some great people on campus, but I wasn't directly involved in their leadership. I've always been pulled to more mainstream causes to use my values and my purpose and my faith to infuse that wherever I go.

Martha: So good and such a good encouragement for all of us. And to know that in the college years, good solid relationship with Jesus Christ can be, just made cemented into your life. So let's fast-forward to what led you to write this book that Jim is holding up right now. Emotional Endurance. Where'd that come from?

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah, so actually dovetailing from college, so I think in my 20s, I learned the skills of what emotional endurance required. I learned that I didn't have them, that I needed them, and what even that was. And then moving into my 30s, I actually started coining it and practicing and teaching and coaching and training organizations, executive leaders, other college campuses on the science of emotional endurance.

Leslie Bosserman: And now in my early 40s, I wrote a book about it. So I think that's where all these skills tie in. And the framework of it, it came out of a lot of prayer. It came out of a lot of trial and error in all honesty, 'cause this is what happens when we are both entrepreneurs or business owners or busy parents or even single people waiting for what's next. So I won't give away too much, 'cause I know you have some great questions. But the framework was solid in my heart for at least 20 years before this book became alive.

Martha: You know what? That just gives us some really good validation, because you've lived it out, right? This isn't something you just, you know, found out about it last month. (chuckling)

Leslie Bosserman: I honestly, I joke I joke to my husband, I'm like, "This book has been living inside of me so long. It can only do so much good inside of me. It has to grow outside of me, otherwise it's not benefiting more people, and that's truly what ministry is."

Martha: Beautiful.

Jim: And your husband is who helped bring it out of you. That love, that's real. To me, based on reading your story and your book and getting a feel for your heart, those six months of being, what you called a couch burrito, I believe you said - wrapped up like a burrito on your couch, whatever you, it was, it was a dark time.

Leslie Bosserman: A blanket burrito. (laughter)

Jim: A blanket burrito. That's what it was. But you had thought all your life it was gonna be journalism, and all of a sudden you did your first news on the UCLA news network, your first anchor spot, and all of a sudden you started questioning everything.

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah.

Jim: And that's a resilience thing. And it really challenged you, and the Lord then brought, He brought your husband, your future husband into your life to kinda lead you out of that. That to me was the beginning of this journey, because it is a journey, isn't it? Emotional endurance is a journey.

Leslie Bosserman: And it's a skills-based practice throughout your entire life, right? So when I think about those formative years, so from that moment coming back from that news segment when I was 20 to, I think, seven years later on laying on that couch. So much happens in the span of seven years, and then it's also a blink, right? When we think about time and space and what we experience.

Leslie Bosserman: And I've known my husband since we were eight. We actually met at church camp. And so I look at some of the foundational strength of friendship and the things that we build throughout our lives, whether they're knowledge, skills, relationships, all these gifts that God gives us, and how He's investing in us even before we know how they'll be used.

Leslie Bosserman: And I think that truly is the framework for how we then build our emotional endurance through those seasons.

Martha: Okay, so why is this something that a lot of Christians really need to work on, but they don't really even recognize that there's the need?

Leslie Bosserman: So I look at the fruits of the spirit, for example.

Martha: Okay.

Leslie Bosserman: And we talk about, oh, love, joy, peace, all these things we want to cultivate. No one is like, "Let's go with longsuffering." "Let's just stick with that one", right? And when I really take a step back and say, what does our society, what does the workplace, what does the world need us to be to reflect the heart and the message of Jesus Christ to people, to believers and non-believers?

Leslie Bosserman: It needs us to be steadfast, strong, to be like accepting of when we have hard times. It's not this Pollyanna rose-colored glasses approach. I am such an optimist, but one of the things that this process of life has taught me is you're gonna have to name the times that are really hard, 'cause God redeems that for His good.

Leslie Bosserman: So emotional endurance as a whole is a framework for building specific skills to keep going when you don't really want to. Because the thing I think that sets us apart as believers is when someone sees us, they say, "There's no reason you should want to keep going. There's no reason through the suffering, through what you're experiencing, that you have this hope, that you have this faith and this joy.

Leslie Bosserman: There's no earthly reason that this should be here, yet here you are." And a lot of that is what I tie into in the skills practice in my book.

Martha: And I can't wait to dig into that more. And Jim's been alluding to your story and of your life, and that is interwoven throughout the chapters. So listeners, I encourage you to, as we're talking about this book, we'll put the link in the show notes for you to find it and get it for yourself, because this is an area that all of us, no matter where we're at, can work on.

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Jim: Patriotmobile.com/iwork4him. We did it. You should do it, too.

Jim: All right, so how do we get started, Leslie? Building emotional endurance takes time, as we talked about in the introduction, it takes a lifetime. You talked about this book's been inside of you for 20 years. Takes time.

Leslie Bosserman: So it takes time, and I believe, Jim, that you start exactly where you are now. Just like God meets us where we are in those moments, there's no checklist or prerequisites for accepting that grace, just like there's no checklist for just saying, I'm a broken-down hot mess today, and I don't feel good, and I need Jesus, and I don't know how to keep going."

Leslie Bosserman: And the admitting of where you are, and that might not resonate with you. You might say, "Actually, I'm feeling pretty good today. It's not the best day, but I'm doing okay." So wherever you are, that's your starting line. And we don't compare and contrast. We just start where we are. And then moving from there, we look at it and say, "Where do I want to be now and next?"

Leslie Bosserman: And so as an executive leadership coach, I've had a practice called Lead With Intention for over 15 years, and I've worked with clients from nonprofits to educators to Fortune 500 execs. And I look at this commonality of this desire to go from where they are now to what they really truly want to cultivate.

Leslie Bosserman: And we see this across all walks of life from young children who want to learn to read or ride a bike to executive leaders or entrepreneurs who have a vision. And so when I think about emotional endurance, it's more than just the resilience to keep going. It's a skills-based practice of when stuff is tough, how do you pick yourself up?

Leslie Bosserman: How do you bounce back, but with that perseverance and that desire and hope to overcome? So I really dig deep into the science of failing in your strengths so then you can lean into that, and the science of hope. And I go into a lot of different psychological tools that have been proven that the Bible said first. And so it's really this integration of science and scripture.

Jim: And let me just tell, for everybody who just got freaked out by the fact that you brought in the psychological stuff. Don't worry. I read this book, and I wasn't put off by all the psychological stuff. She puts it in... leslie does a great job of putting it in eighth grade language instead of college language. And she draws a picture that you can put in your mind, and sometimes there's actually pictures of your mind in there. So it's good. I understand some of that was necessary. That's the kind of stuff like, is a little-

Martha: But it's interesting because-

Jim: But it's how God did it ...

Martha: we've had several podcasts lately with amazing guests that are really helping us to see, okay, God created the science that now science is proving or sharing or... And all of us learn differently, Leslie, so that's one of the things that, we realize some people just need all those facts. Like prove it all to me. And other people just need- very simple, this is just what you should do, and it's God says it, so we should do it.

Martha: I was thinking about you saying, this is so much more than that era where people just said, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and let's just move on. Get over whatever you're struggling with and move on." And that doesn't make us into a better person and fully live in who God created us to be. So in your book, you focus on six things: failure, resilience, hope, courage, energy, and purpose. So all of these are necessary ingredients for the healthy mind that can emotionally endure. Which one is the hardest for you?

Leslie Bosserman: Such a good question. So this framework, these kind of, we call it six principles for developing emotional endurance, and in each of those principles, just for people that haven't accessed the book yet, I break it down into three skills, so it's really accessible. You can read it in two to three minutes. There's also reflection questions, so it makes it really interactive in that sense, if you choose that.

Martha: So I just wanna highlight, this is not a textbook.

Leslie Bosserman: No ... it's actually a gift book.

Martha: Yeah.

Leslie Bosserman: So it's a Zondervan gift book, so it's fun that way. You can read it in under four hours. Or in tiny chunks. But to your question I think the biggest one that I'm leaning in right now is hope to heal. It's one of the harder ones for me. I tend, like I said, to be an optimist, but to-

Jim: People listening already figured that part out. (laughing)

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah. But to have this sense of having an eternal hope for a bigger purpose when everything around you feels hard. I live in Sacramento, California, and I joke that God put me in Nineveh, because I never in my life thought I would live in the capital of California, literally a mile from the capital, as a conservative Christian believer who cares very deeply about my community.

Leslie Bosserman: And many people have said, "Why haven't you moved away?" Or, "There's more conservative places." And I'm like, it's hard to be a light in a room full of light bulbs, right? And you still can do that. But we are called to be in hard places for good godly work. And having that hope and having that ability to know that this is a temporary life for an eternal plan.

Leslie Bosserman: And I integrate the late Rick Snyder has this whole psychological theory on how to develop hope that the Bible beautifully coincides with. So I won't go into all the depth there, but if anyone is struggling with suffering or depression or anxiety or hopelessness I have a whole section on not just what the science said, but how did God input this in our hearts and then solidify it in our minds to help carry us forward.

Jim: As I was reading your book yesterday, I have a friend who's really been struggling with hope and his future. And there was just two pages in there where I took a picture and I'm like, "You need to read this right now." And he calls me like, "This, that was perfect." And I said "No, get the book. It's on the..." And I sent him the Amazon link.

Leslie Bosserman: Thank you that makes it worth it because that's the whole reason, right? That's the reason as entrepreneurs and authors and creatives, we do the work to show up to help other people we've never even met yet.

Jim: Okay, so for us, when you talk about... I laughed many times during the book. But one of the... Martha and I are to-doers, and lots, we're task-oriented. And the two things we really need to work on are creating margin- ... so that when unexpected things happen, they don't throw you off, or so that you're available when unexpected people show up. And then rest, the Sabbath rest thing, it's the most hilarious thing. The Lord's moved us to a church that the service on Sunday isn't until 10:30 in the morning, and they don't get done till 12:30. And it's a two-hour service.

Martha: Yeah.

Jim: And it's been great because it forces us to have a mellow Sunday morning. We're not getting up, running, going to church. And then so - let's just talk about that. Why is building margin in our lives key to building emotional endurance?

Leslie Bosserman: Ooh, so good. So Dr. Richard Swenson is the ultimate authority on margin. He's a Christian physician and wrote a book called Margin, and I read it-

Jim: Great book. Great book.

Leslie Bosserman: 15 years ago, right?

Jim: Yep.

Leslie Bosserman: And I put this into practice in my life. Also as I joke that I'm type A, my husband calls me type triple A. So I just say, "Great, I'm reliable and I'm always there in an emergency."

Jim: Did he say you were a Duracell or an Energizer?

Leslie Bosserman: No, I'm definitely Energizer. Not that I need to be branded, but from that I am... Like, if you look at from a Gallup StrengthsFinder profile, achiever is like my number one. Achiever and activator. And so when I look at some of these skills, doubling with strengths, having positive margin. So margin is defined as the amount of power you have, so the resourcing, the skills, the education, the support systems.

Leslie Bosserman: Power minus load, so load is obligations, stressors, stuff you have to do. Sometimes even positive things that are still heavy, 'cause that happens. So power minus load equals available margin. So if your load is heavier than your power and your resourcing, you're gonna feel depleted. Just no one would want to read my book if I didn't actually have margin on the edges, right?

Leslie Bosserman: If there was no white space, your eyes wouldn't know where to rest and land. Our bodies actually only heal and compute information when we have rest. That's our brain forms all those neurological connections while we sleep. That's why sleep is so essential. If you're also a parent of young children, I'm with you in this, and I know this. And it's still really important.

Leslie Bosserman: And there is a reason why God created the world in six days and then purposely rested an entire day and sanctified it, right? And yet I joke and I even said this in the book, that if God had not ordained the Sabbath holy, I would never stop. I would just keep going, right?

Leslie Bosserman: And like you said, having that invitation into the power pause or that ability to say, "I'm here. This is my purposeful pause to have sanctified time," whatever that looks like we don't need to wait for an entire day. We can do that throughout our week. And having a full day to do that, that is a true gift in our society that would tell us that, "No, you never can rest. You never unplug. Don't restart your body. Don't restart your phone." But we've been shown that if we don't do those, things will break.

Martha: Okay, so tell me about the difference between ta-das and to-dos.

Leslie Bosserman: I'm sorry. You gotta do it- Ta-da ... with the jazz hands. Ta-da. Ta-da. I'm a to-doer as well. So I'm the queen of lists and strategy. And we own and operate a co-working space with childcare, and I'm a full-time preschool director on top of an author and all these things. So there are lists... There are so many lists. And yet what I found, often, if I have a to-do list, and I get to the end of my day, and things aren't checked off, and I feel this c- this compulsion to, "Okay, I'm gonna work late," or, "I'm gonna finish these things."

Leslie Bosserman: And one, that's not healthy. It, in those seasons when I pushed that way, it hasn't helped my marriage or my family relationships or my sleep. I can be productive, but productivity is not the... The currency of efficiency is not what makes us feel successful, right? It's temporary. So what I started doing, at the end of each day, I have a separate journal, and I write down what I am proud to have accomplished or what I made progress in, and I call this my ta-da list.

Leslie Bosserman: And so instead of the to-do list, which still has boxes unchecked, I can look at that and say, "Okay, so today, I got all three kids to school on time. And we went grocery shopping and we had a client call." And those are just things that I might have already checked off my to-do list, but I also go deeper. Say "I went on a walk with a podcast in my ear or my Bible dwell app in my ear, and I meditated on God's presence in my life."

Leslie Bosserman: Like something that brings me back to not just what I did, but who I am. So I really focus on leadership from the inside out. So who you choose to be needs to shape what you do. Because we can do a lot, but at the end of the day, if we've accomplished a lot, but we're not - we don't feel a sense of completion or like positive pride, then it's just a lot of box checking.

Martha: Yeah. So good.

Jim: But there's some satisfaction checking a box. (laughing)

Leslie Bosserman: Oh, I love the box checking and the highlighting. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying ditch your to-do list for your ta-da list. I'm saying please also try a ta-da list.

Martha: Well, you know what? It's actually interesting, Jim, 'cause that's something the last couple of years we've tried to do when, 'cause we've been rehabbing buildings, and, you know- there, it's always, there's more that has to be done. And so we have actually started to say, "But did we celebrate this thing we finished?" So did the wall... What does it say? Celebrate the small victories. There we go. That's right. That's exactly right. So sometimes we've even caught ourselves being in an argument or something about what's next, and it's like, "Oh wait. We didn't celebrate that we just finished painting 1,200 square feet of a room." "Let's celebrate that. Okay, now what do we need to do?"

Jim: Take a picture!

Leslie Bosserman: Take a picture. Do something. Mark the moment. That's right. Do something, right? And I started, this seems so small, but one of the things we do in our family, we high-five a ton. And we have different fun high-fives for things. So if someone finishes something or our five-year-old's "Mom, kindergarten was great today," we'll be, "Great high-fives, double high-fives."

Leslie Bosserman: And then we have a, a kiddo with special needs who we have a whole people have secret handshakes. We have a whole high-five, like it has six parts to it. And he's all about it. So just taking the moment, it takes 10 seconds.

Martha: Yeah.

Leslie Bosserman: But yet we get so busy or so, "Oh, just give me a minute. Mom's busy." Like that isn't sustainable for a relationship. And so if we're always busy and doing, like I talk about how we trade in efficiency for sufficiency. And if we don't have that sense of rest and that sense of purpose, then we're not modeling that for our children, and also the people that we're managing.

Leslie Bosserman: If we're in, if we're out in the business world and we have teams we're managing, or even the colleagues we're working alongside, how are we modeling that? Where we talk a lot about positive work-life balance, I actually, I call it work-life dynamic, because there's a pace to it. There's a rhythm and a cadence and a tempo, and that's something I talk about in Emotional Endurance as well, like how to choose your cadence, and some of that is rest.

Jim: Yeah, a lot of it is rest, especially for to-doers. For sure. All right, we're gonna talk with Leslie in a minute about triggers and failure, because those are two things that I, when I read that, I'm like, ooh, I like her perspective on this. But I wanna talk for a minute about something that most of us as business owners fail to do.

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Jim: Okay. Leslie, we're not running out of time, but we're getting close. I wanna make sure, as part of building emotional endurance, you have to identify triggers. And as I was reading this, I was looking at my own self because there are certain triggers that shut me down, certain things. You get a little PTS. For me, it's not a diagnosed syndrome in my life. Could be. You never know. You'd have to ask Martha. We've been married 40 years. But there are certain things that are triggers that cause you to react certain ways.

Jim: Why is it imp- And I wrote some of them down because you ask questions at the end of every chapter. "Hey, what's a trigger for this? What's a trigger for that?" And I just hate, I, you get tired of dealing with people that get in your face, and it's a trigger to... I, growing up, before I became a believer, my trigger when somebody got in my face was, I'm just gonna get in their face. 'Cause the best way to approach a bully is to get back in their face and boys to boys, punch them. Because the best way to shut a bully down is to actually call their bluff.

Jim: But that's not necessarily a great adult way to handle things. Certainly not a Jesus way to handle things. Why is it important for us to know, Leslie? I'm just, confessions of Jim Brangenberg right here on iWork4Him. Why is it important for us to-

Leslie Bosserman: I'm glad my book touched you so much that you could admit this on air. This is good, Jim. Oh, yeah. This is good stuff.

Jim: It was - your book was great. I enjoyed it.

Martha: And all his neighborhood friends from his childhood years are listening in right now.

Jim: So that they now can buy the book- Jody and Paul just saying hi. Why is it important for us to know what triggers us so we can build our emotional endurance?

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah. So this is actually really one of the foundational pieces. I start the book with this. So there's a graphic that I created that really looks at the pattern between feeling an emotion and how that emotion in a split second turns into a thought. So it goes emotion to thought, that thought influences our actions, repeated actions turn into behavior, and then behavior shapes the character we're known for, right?

Leslie Bosserman: And so I'll say it again, emotions, thoughts, actions, behavior, character, and there's a whole lovely graphic. So what happens with triggers, whenever there's something that gets under our skin or we're just like, "Oh, it's been a day," or, "This happened again and again, and it's just too much." Or maybe it's something from our childhood that we never addressed or something that we were berated over or shamed into that we have just stuffed down, and all of a sudden it's coming up again.

Leslie Bosserman: So one of the core things I do in my coaching practice, but also what I, I teach in the book, is how to name your emotion so you can tame your trigger. So if you can name it, then you can tame it. And this isn't "Oh, I named my emotion, now everything's fine." I'm not saying that because it does take work and God, right? It's all of the things.

Jim: Oh, absolutely.

Leslie Bosserman: So what I do in this process is if you're feeling, let's say overwhelm is one that many people can relate to. So something happens, whatever the trigger is, and then overwhelm comes up and you feel your heart rate, you feel maybe shortness of breath, or your mind is spinning and you're not really focused.

Leslie Bosserman: Number one, the first thing anyone should do is breathe. I'm a big fan of breathing, like deep belly breaths. This book is not on like the science of breathwork. There's a lot of great books on that. But I practice that and I teach that as well. So-

Jim: We highly recommend breathing here on iWork4Him, we highly recommend that everybody practice- keeps you alive, breathing every day.

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah. It's just great for living. Yeah, intentional breathing. Like actually think about your breathing, right? And so when you do that, you get more oxygen in your brain. And then you think better, and you actually make better decisions. And so God designed us to have these powerful emotions, the good and the bad, and He also designed us to take our thoughts captive.

Leslie Bosserman: So in 2 Peter and 2 Corinthians, both of these chapters talk about how taking our thoughts captive and really allowing God's Holy Spirit to come in and say, "What is better than the thought I'm having right now?" So if I'm feeling overwhelmed and my thought goes to, "I will never get this done. I don't know how this will ever work out for me," that's not a place of possibility, right? That's a very limiting place.

Leslie Bosserman: That puts our body in fight or flight. It narrows our attentional focus. And based on that, we can't see everything out here that God desires for us. So instead, if we say, "I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I don't want to stay overwhelmed, but in this place of overwhelm, here's one thing I can do," and that might be breathing.

Leslie Bosserman: The next thing might say, "What would I want to feel instead of overwhelm?" So I do this as a coach. I'll say, "Take whatever you're feeling and then go to the opposite place and say, 'What could I replace this with?'" Now, this doesn't mean it happens instantaneously. But by separating that emotional, visceral, physical response with what you hope to feel, so the opposite of overwhelm for a lot of people is peace or hope.

Leslie Bosserman: So then I would say, what can I do to access an ounce more of peace right now, right? What would allow that to come into play? And so really helping people not just name what triggers them, but once they are triggered, what do they do with that?

Martha: That is so key, 'cause I know so many people that are like, "Oh, that's a trigger for me." Okay, but what are you doing about it?

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah. If you just say it's a trigger and use it as an excuse, that's called being a victim to your trigger. And staying a victim to your trigger. And God did not design us for victimhood. He designed us to overcome and be champions and persevere for God's kingdom.

Martha: Such a valuable thing. So right there, I just wanna stop and pause and remind our listeners, this is why we have this conversation, because how many people in your life do you love that have been stuck in that trigger, that they are a victim of it rather than living in freedom?

Jim: And Jesus came to set the captives free, and people are captive by their triggers.

Leslie Bosserman: Yeah. And our society has created this, this trigger warning zone, this safe space zone, and to some levels it can be helpful until it's not. And so I'm not here to necessarily berate all of this, but I live in the, I live in the capital of California. I see a lot of things and I see a lot of different perspectives, and I hold a lot.

Leslie Bosserman: And because of that, I have to be mindful of when I go into the workplace, when I go into a space where people have maybe ideologically and religiously opposite perspectives of mine, how do I hold space for them and not get triggered by what they're saying, but allow the spaciousness to let the values and the character and God's truth speak through me so they feel that peace, and they're like, "Oh- This feels different."

Martha: Yeah.

Leslie Bosserman: So when families walk into our preschool and walk into our business, we don't brand ourselves as a Christian preschool very intentionally because we want to be able to have a space where anyone can show up and they can come in and feel safe and seen and known and belong. That being said, we also have a space that has some very clear rules about behavior and how we treat people. So it's not just "Come as you are and do what you want." That doesn't work with two to five-year-olds, right?

Jim: Doesn't work with any age group, Leslie. Not really, no.

Leslie Bosserman: No, not really. It's just people ask me, "Oh, you do professional executive leadership coaching and you're a preschool director." I'm like, "Same skills, different audience." So it just depends. But I look at when we use triggers as an excuse to continue to have bad behavior, we let Satan win. When we name our emotions that are triggering us and the things or the situations that are triggering us, the emotions that are happening, and what we're choosing to do as a result to figure out what motivates us to drive positive behavior, that's where we tame those triggers and we live out our calling.

Jim: So powerful. And we're not gonna be able to go deep into failure, but Leslie goes deep into failure in the book. Not in our own failures, but just the idea that failure often related to our strengths and how we can fail forward, how we can actually learn from these failures. But I really wanna end with this question 'cause we're almost out of time.

Jim: As workplace believers, everyone around us is judging us, and they're judging our behavior in order to determine if the Jesus in us is somebody they wanna follow. And they're like "that doesn't seem very.." if you do something like that, which is fantastic for this conversation. Why is working our, on our emotional endurance such a powerful witness to those around us?

Leslie Bosserman: Oh, it's... I look at all the skills-based practices that are already in the Bible as ways of living and leading, and what I did in Emotional Endurance is I just took the principles that I had been taught, that I had then tried and tested, and packaged it in a way that hopefully reaches other people. So when I think about there's nothing new under the sun, right? Ecclesiastes tells us this.

Leslie Bosserman: So these skills, they're branded in a certain way, but it's not that I am the expert in this. I have a level of expertise from my practice, right? But when you look at practicing emotional endurance and making that part of your life framework, it's making the commitment to saying, "No matter what happens to me, whatever circumstance I face, I will not be broken down by these, these human, physical circumstances. I will allow them to build me up, but I also will allow myself to hurt and grieve and have those moments in the valleys, and walk in the valley moments."

Leslie Bosserman: It's not just about being in the valley and bouncing back on the mountain. That feels very fake. But it's how wherever you find yourself, what do you need to do to not just lay down and stay stuck, but to get up and have that sense of resilience and grit so you can move forward, whatever elevation you're at.

Jim: And it inspires all of those around us.

Leslie Bosserman: Absolutely ...

Martha: I just, as our listeners, I am imagining that every single one of them can relate and be intrigued by what God has helped you to compile, right? Taking the scripture, taking the knowledge that you have received, the studying that you've done with science, and putting it all together and saying there is, there is so much hope for us to live a more full life by living in the obedience of what God has shown us, and not living in the failure, not living in the the triggers, all these negative things that we've talked about.

Martha: But that, what do we do with that? What can God teach us and help us to become? And so I appreciate you doing the hard work and the heavy lifting on our behalf and writing this book. Listeners, I encourage you to get a copy. See it for yourself, and then share it with other people because I believe, whether it's in their, everybody's Christmas stockings at Christmas or along with your coworker gift baskets at Christmas or, whatever it might be, an opportunity for you to get that into the hands of other people. So I encourage everyone right now to check into it for themselves first. It's always one thing to elbow the person next to you and say, "Oh, you need this," but see it for ourselves. But thank you so much for writing this, and for the, just the joy and the energy you bring to the conversation, because it doesn't have to be a defeat. It can be a victory.

Leslie Bosserman: 100%. And one, one thing I wanted to just add is I actually initially wrote it for a mainstream population, and I kept writing and just it took a while to put it together, and God kept knocking on my heart saying, "This message needs me in the center." And I'm like, "Of course it does." And so instead of pursuing traditional mainstream publishing, I pursued Christian publishing.

Jim: Yeah.

Leslie Bosserman: And that transformed my life in amazing ways. But I also wrote it from the perspective of if someone has maybe fallen away from faith, or they haven't even been met with faith yet, and that you might have a colleague at work who is just struggling with purpose and direction.

Leslie Bosserman: This book, even though it has Christian principles and biblical scriptures, it's not something that's gonna slap you in the face with Jesus and make you run away if you're not a believer yet. So I wrote it for a mainstream audience with a Christian lens, if that makes sense.

Jim: Beautiful. And I would agree. Having read from the beginning to the end, this would be, this works for any of your friends that are willing to actually admit that they would like to work on this. Leslie Bosserman, we're out of time, but we wanna make sure and encourage everybody to get a copy of Emotional Endurance. Thank you for being on iWork4Him today.

Jim: Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for - It's been a lot of fun. We appreciate it.

Leslie Bosserman: Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Jim: Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting iWork4Him and spreading this message that your work matters to God, and all the pieces that come into making that par- that possible.

Jim: Join our quote-unquote coffee club. Give 5 to $10 a month at iwork4him.com/donate to help us reach more workplaces with this message, and reach more workplace believers with this message that your work matters to God.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers and our workplace, it's our mission field. But ultimately, iWork4Him